Android Studio: New IntelliJ based IDE for Android Development

Oliver Frommel

Looks like someone at Google finally came to realize that the Eclipse
IDE is “not so good”. That is to say, it’s bloated, slow and the user
interface is a mess.

As an alternative the well-known Java IDE IntelliJ could already be used
for Android development in the past. Now Google has released a preview
of the new Android Studio which is based on IntelliJ, too. It features a
preview of layouts for different smartphones and tablets. Android Studio
makes use of a new build system called
Gradle.

You can find the “Early Access Preview” of Android Studio download
here. There’s
also a short guide for migrating from Eclipse to Android Studio. To
migrate projects you should first export files from Eclipse and generate
Gradle build files (that requires at least version 22.0 of the ADT
plugin). Then, in Android Studio import the project with “Create project
from existing sources”.